The recent passage of gay marriage rights in New York demonstrate what I talked about in my TED lecture — the steady historical movement away from dividing people based on anatomical differences. What do you think our democracy is going to look like in the future, given the ways that we’re increasingly able to see anatomical complexity (variations on categories we thought were simple) and able to change our bodies?

Is the Earth maxed out, or should we be optimistic abut being able to solve our future? At TED2012 last week, Paul Gilding made the case for the former, and Peter Diamandis argued for the latter. And then: they debated onstage. Watch the video above to find out what happened. Want to talk about it […]

Alice Dreger gave a powerful talk at TEDxNorthwestern on how our changing perception of anatomical differences is also changing our democracy. She was in New York today, so we invited her to the TED office for a live Q&A, where she posed this question: The recent passage of gay marriage rights in New York demonstrates […]